semblance

• semblaunce

From Middle English semblaunce, from Old French semblance,^[1] from semblant, present participle of sembler.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈsɛm.bləns/

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semblance (countable and uncountable, plural semblances)

1. A likeness, a similarity; the quality of being similar.
2. The way something looks or appears; an appearance; a form.
   • 1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in The Last Man. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 2:

     England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves.

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevensony, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde:

     He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer.

• (likeness): veneer

• “semblance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “semblance”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “semblance”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.